Structured hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane for antifouling mitigation

Abstract

Tailoring of membranes for application in various field could be the key to lessen the burden from the critical water shortage situation worldwide. Ultrafiltration membranes (with effective pore size in the range of 0.001 to 0.05µm) drew much attention owning to its cost-effective (Yu, Liu, 2018) and universal applicability. Herein, the fabrication of Polyethersulfone (PES) structured hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane via the reversed thermally induced phase separation technique and a designed spinneret are proposed. The aims of this research are: 1) to prepare self-supporting membrane with optimized bi-continuous structure from the novel membrane preparation technique (Kahrs, Gühlstorf, 2019) and 2) to mitigate fouling tendency which is the biggest hindrance to the wider application of membrane technology with local turbulences from its structured surface (Culfaz, Wessling, 2011). The fabricated membranes showed bi-continuous cross-sectional structure, micro patterns on the outer surface and less flux decline compared to the commercial membrane in a general protein fouling test.